How To: Play Need For Speed: High stakes on Windows XP. Need for Speed Hot Pursuit WINDOWS 10 PRO DIRECTX 12 PC. Need for Speed Hot Pursuit. The Need for Speed series is back, with improved gameplay and graphics that are sure to keep you glued behind the wheel with Electronic Arts’ latest version: High Stakes. You can choose between test drives, tournaments, special events, the hot pursuit mode or the risky high stakes mode. Re: Need For Speed 4: Stock & Expansion pack 4.0 I just wanted to say thank you for your continued work on this. Still got NFS HS running on Windows 7 thanks to your efforts.

• Need For Speed High Stakes Download
• Nfs High Stakes Windows 7 Installer
• Nfs High Stakes Patch

The Need For Speed High Stakes Page.

Genre: Racing.

System Requirements:
Minimum: 166 MHz Pentium CPU, 16 MB of RAM, 100 MB of hard drive space, 4 × speed CD-ROM drive, PCI video card with 1 MB of RAM.
Recommended: 200 MHz Pentium CPU, 32 MB of RAM, 8 × speed CD-ROM drive, graphics accelerator.
My Recommendation: 500 MHz Pentium 3 CPU, 64 MB of RAM, 3Dfx Voodoo Banshee.
• This game will work fine with the XBOX 360 control pad in Windows XP and Windows 7.
See below for Windows 7 tips!

(Please note that some screenshots include unofficial vehicles.)
Need For Speed High Stakes will take you for an awesome ride in numerous hot exotic sportscars across 19 top notch tracks. The gameplay is excellent, and you’ll be right in there at the drivers seat hooning round like a mad-man!
You can choose from numerous driving views too, including in car, up and behind and right down near the road. You just need to adjust what views you want in the options. Each car has 2 levels of brightness for headlights which you’ll need at night, plus reversing lights, brake lights and even the dashboard lights up. Other cool special effects are the lens flare, snow splashing up on the screen, coloured fog and transparent flowing water.
Recent PCs will have this running really well, although I had to get a patch for it to work with my Radeon 9600 and newer video cards. I tried this when we had our old computer running at 150 MHz, and it was like 1 frame per second! Ugh. It works fine on Windows XP also. With my GeForce 7600 GT, I found that 4 × anti-aliasing caused the videos to not show up for the intro, but 2 × was okay.
There are hundreds of cars you can download for this game now also, which are mostly all home made ones, and you can have a total of 50 cars all up in the game. Because each car has a serial number, there is a handy serial number editor which you can download as well which sorts out conflicts with new cars. Some of the new high polygon count vehicles require different menu files for the game too, so that it doesn’t chuck a wobbly on the car select screen. If you really must have a certain car that needs it, then this is worth downloading, although it will remove the reflections of your cars in the menus.
Here are some screen shots:

The Dodge Viper on Raceway 3

The lighthouse in Dolphin Cove

The Jaguar XKR in Landstrasse

The Subaru Impreza in Snowy Ridge

Need For Speed High Stakes Download

The game features 6 tracks to begin with, but to unlock the rest, you’ll need to participate in the Career mode and Knockout races. In Career races you race your car to win money, win other cars and take the ultimate risk of damaging your own car and even losing it! Once you’ve completed all the Career races, you’ll unlock a list of cheats / Easter Eggs, which only work then anyway.
There are a few bits of bodginess in the game, but not too many. These include the cactuses in Red Rock Ridge, which are completely indestructable, the bridge on the same course which you can knock down, some upside-down textures here and there and some really off collision detection on trees.
You do however get some nice options to tweak in the track and car selection screens, plus in car views, slide shows and a track presentation.

The game overall is definitely fun to play, and is excellent in 2 player mode. Although if you want to play this on a LAN or something, you’ll need to have 2 copies of the game, ’cos it doesn’t allow you to do a remote installation like NFS 3. D’oh!
You can use the XBOX 360 controller okay with this too, but I adjusted the analogue d-pad sensitivity in a bit, because mine tends to hang a bit to the left by itself.
If you want new cars you’ve downloaded to retain the colour you chose for them, create a directory in the “SaveDataCars” directory with the same name as the one that contains the car file in “DataCars.” When you next play the game and set the car colour, a file called “car.FEC” will appear in the newly made directory that will store what colour (and possibly other stuff) that you chose.
Looking for my replays? Get them here. There’s no extra stuff that I’ve downloaded in these either, and the tracks are unedited also, so you should be sweet.
• New Hot Pursuit replays — now updated with 2 more 8 lap replays from the 14th of April, 2018. In one, it’s Ferrari F50 vs Ferrari F50. I lap the poor guy twice, who gets booked by the cops 8 times. But then again I was using the “moon” cheat. After that, it’s La Nina vs La Nina in Empire City. I lap the dude once, and do a psycho ram of one of the cops. The 2 combined probably go for close to ½ an hour, so only watch them if you have plenty of free time.

• Grab yourself some spooky ghosts here too, plus accompanying replays. There’s Kindiak Park in the La Nina, Atlantica, also in the La Nina and Rocky Pass in the McLaren F1. If you’re pro enough you can beat these. Now updated with some more from March 2018. (Empire City in the La Nina, Raceway 3 in the La Nina [with no replay], Summit in the Ferrari 550 Maranello, Celtic Ruins in the La Nina and Landstrasse in the Ferrari F50 vs a Lambo Diablo.)
I should also mention that loading other people’s ghosts, such as mine, may change some of your in-game settings, such as tranmission type, player name, assists and damage gauge. In this case, you should then load one of your own back up.

• Get yourself a new title / loading screen by me also! You can see a sample here before you download anything. Of course the full version is 4 × the size.
• While I have the room, here is a fix / replacement special effects file, which corrects the rather crusty looking lens flare, and adds a subtle touch of colour as well. Try it & see if you like it.
• You can get my texture redo “pack” here at the moment. I’ll try to get it onto some N.F.S. related site before the end of the century.

• Windows 2000 Notes Here:
(Running on a 1.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2 GB of RAM.)
If you try to install the game, you will get a message saying that it only works in Windows ’95 or Windows ’98. The solution is to use the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 3. (You will need to download this if you don’t have it.) Make a new fix, and set the compatibility to Windows ’98 / Windows ME. The installer will then accept going ahead. On my HP computer, the 3D Setup program crashes at the end of the install, so force it to quit with the task manager. (The one that says 3DData.exe, I think.) It may then come up with an error message. Click on OK, and then it will say that setup is complete.
Next, get the “Spot Patch.” Follow its instructions! If you have an Intel GMA 945 like me, you will need this. I use the dx7z.dll file as the replacement for d3da.dll in the game’s main directory. You should be able to run it and it will come up with “D3D Device.” Also run the .reg file to make sure it’s set to D3D and not DX for the Thrash Driver. You should then be good to go!
• Windows 7 Notes Here:
(Running on a 3.2 GHz Intel CORE i5 [quad core CPU] with 8 GB of RAM.)
This game was getting to be a real pain on my main PC to run, because it seems to expect that the CD is in the primary / 1st optical disc drive that you have. Unfortunately, mine is screwed at reading CDs, and I thought I’d go for a fresh install on my new PC with the 64 bit version of Windows 7. I also wanted to start the career mode over and remove some of the gimmick vehicles I had before.
Firstly, you need to install the game. The installer is a 32 bit program, so that’s no worries. Next, you will need the unofficial “spot patch,” which will give you a new 3D Setup collection of files that will work with newer video cards, such as my nVidia GeForce 640 GT. Stuff that beefy didn’t exist back in 1999! Then follow the instructions it comes with!!! I’m using the DirectX 7 file for the d3da.dll replacement, and that works fine for me. Run the “.reg” file it says, but also look under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE->SOFTWARE->Wow6432Node->Electronic Arts->Need For Speed High Stakes in your registry. It seems to store the settings here now, which is different to previous versions of Windows. Find where it says Thrash Driver and change it to “d3d” and not “dx” like it has by default. The game should then run okay from the original executable file that it came with.
• If you’ve made a backup copy of the game (and haven’t stolen it from the Internet,) you will need a SafeDisc patch, and then you’ll need to change your shortcut’s target to: 'C:Program Files (x86)Electronic ArtsNeed For Speed High Stakesnfshs.exe' -patchrestart. You may wish to rename the RNetLog.mnu and connect.mnu files under DataMenus if you want the game to start to the main menu, and not jump to some other online beta dealie. Although this will skip the intro videos, it is one way to get a backup working in Windows 7. You can read about this tip here. So, I don’t take full credit for that one.
• On a side note, I found that using EA’s patches (such as 4.43) caused my replays to stuff up. So you should stick with the original executable file where possible. If you share your replays, it may be a good idea to mention what version of the game you’re running, and avoid any downloaded cars. EA’s last patch, which is 4.5, I think, doesn’t allow 3rd party vehicles at all, except for ones that are installed in your SaveDataCars directory.
• I suddenly got an error message in Windows 7 from the game, saying that there was less than 1 MB free on the hard drive. I don’t know what set it off; whether it was related to changes in the swap file or what, but the game would no longer start up without the message! Thankfully, you can use the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit. If you don’t have it, you need to download it. Version 5.6 works with Windows 7. Run the 32 bit version of the Compatibility Administrator (if you have a 64 bit OS), and make a new fix which has “GetDiskFreeSpace2GB” for the program. That should be all you need. Save the SDB file in case you want it again, and then install the patch from the file menu. Windows will store the settings in its AppPatch directory, and you can then run the program again as normal (, including any command line parameters you may have set up in a short cut, that it may need, and what not).